The End of the Beginning!

My favorite exercises were posting image generators, creating a customized search engine, exploring Technorati, posting to a Wiki and putting a podcast on my blog because they were new and, therefore, more exciting than the other exercises. There were many take-aways, but none that suprised me. I expected to and wanted to learn more about Web 2.0 applications, and the program allowed me to do it. In fact, I don't think I would have done it without the program. To complete this kind of program requires direction, discipline and focus. I could provide the discipline and focus, but not the direction. The plethora of Web 2.0 applications is daunting. What to learn? Where to start? The program gave me answers to those questions.

The program has affected my lifelong learning goals. After completing the program I am better equipped to realize them. One of my lifelong learning goals has been to remain current with Web technology. With what I have learned, I will be able to do that. By taking this program I not only learned about Web technology, I learned how to learn about Web technology.

With regard to the program's format and concept, I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You could make a few tweaks here and there, but overall I think the format and concept are fine.

Audiobooks

Can you believe it? As an Information Services librarian I often get asked at the Information or Telephone Reference Desk about audio- books, and I direct customers to the Digital Media tab, but until today I had never downloaded an audiobook.

I bought an MP3 player a few months ago. I recently was given a pair of Bose QuietComfort 3 noise-cancelling headphones. Now all
I need is a bus ride.

And the bus ride is coming right up. On Monday I'm going by bus to Boston for Christmas. Before I go, I downloaded two or audiobooks from Queens Library: The Camel Club by David Baldacci and The Fifth Horseman by James Patterson. Now with my MP3 Player, by noise- cancelling headphones, my audiobooks and my bus ticket, I won't even miss the Acela train --much.

Podcasts

G-r-r-r-r-r! Or should I say A-r-r-r-r-r-gh! There are only two days, nine hours and 33 minutes to the 23 1/2 Things deadline (see my Thursday, December 13, 2007 Image Generator post), and I'm trying to put a podcast on my blog. I found Promonet and applied for access so I can get some podcast HTML to put in my HTML/Javascript widget page element (I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about), and a got the following response. "Thank you for applying to IODA Promonet! Your request for access to IODA Promonet has been received. We will contact you within two business days with your sign in information if you are approved, or to request more information to process your application."

Will my blog be graced by a podcast by the deadline? As I've said before, stay tuned. I will not be deterred.

Check out LibVibe on the right. Yes, as you can see perserverence pays off. So doesn't a little help from your friends. When I told Stacey (see my Tuesday, December 18, 2007 Wiki Wiki post) about my problem, she recommended LibVibe, a great weekly podcast about library matters. I visited the LibVibe website, where Marv Kaminsky graciously and clearly explains how to put his podcast on your blog.

YouTube

OK, my YouTube post might be a little premature, but not by much. Nevertheless, as an avid cyclist, I believe this video captures my feelings as I approach the end of 23 1/2 Things, the Queens Library Learning 2.0 project.

I like YouTube because its easily searchable. And besides, it's great fun. Sure I believe there are applications for YouTube in libraries, especially since younger customers are more inclined to use video than print sources.

Crossing the Finish Line

Web 2.0 Awards

Web 2.0 Awards

I decided to create this post on Google Docs. No time like the present to use what I've learned. Right? By doing this I also learned that your headline is not automatically posted as a headline in the default font. You have to edit your post, cut the headline from the body of the post and paste it into the title box.

Yelp.com a city guide that boasts "Real People Real Reviews" looks interesting. I'm a Bostonian, but I've lived in several cities. I realized recently that I have spent most of my adult live in Chicago, so that's the city I'll explore.

I did searches on "theatre" and "theater." The results were almost identical, but they were listed in different orders, and for some reason the Art Institute of Chicago topped both lists. I was happy to see that the lists include legitimate theatres and indie movie houses as well as chain movie theatres. And the reviews are pretty accurate. I'm pleased to have been introduced to this site, and I will refer to it for information about New York City as well as information about other cities when I'm making travel plans.

Yelp.com encourages you to find or write reviews. It lets you bookmark sites. It also gives you lists of events this week and event updates and lets you list events you plan to attend (Beware of stockers). As a social networking site, it encourages you to add friends and invite friends to become "yelpers."

I think this would be a valid site to use for answers -- or at least leads to answers -- to questions from customers about attractions in New York as well as other cities. Most of this kind of information is subjective, anyway, so why not get it from a local source. Just remember to cite your source.

Google Docs Revisited

I posted my Google Docs entry from Google Docs. When I checked my blog, my post wasn't there. I logged out of my blog and logged back in and behold. There it was, sans headline. Google Docs asks if you also want to publish your headlline, but it doesn't provide a box to put the headline in. I assume you just have to put the headline in the same text box as the rest of the post and Google Docs or Blogger publishes the headline in the same font as other headlines automatically. Now I'll go back and email my document to myself. Just for the hell of it.

Google Docs

This is my Google Docs doc. Above the tool bar are five tabs, an Edit tab, an Insert tab, a Revisions tab, a Share tab and a Publish tab. The Edit toolbar doesn't look to very different from the MicroSoft Word tool bar. It has separate font and edit icons insted of a single edit icon. It has a qoutes icon, which Word does not have. It has a Remove Fomatting icon a Style dropdown menu and a Change dropdown menu, which Word does not have. I will have to explore these further.

Clicking the Insert tab brings you to the Insert toolbar, which is really pretty cool. It includes the following links: Image, Ling, Comment, Table,a Bookmark, Special Character, and a Separator dropdown menu. I clicked on Special Characters, but I couldn't find the em dash I wanted to insert. Special Characters has umlauts, however. I like that. It will make it easier for me to write in German.

So Revisions Tab brings you to a list of all the revisions that have been made. It numbers the revisions and tells you who made them. It also lets you compare revisions. You just put a checkmark beside the revisions you want to compare. You click on the Share tab to invite people to collaborate on your document or to view it. You use the Publish tab to post your document to your blog, which is what I'm going to do now. Here goes.

Facebook Redux

Books I Read appears to be a handy way to keep track of books you’ve read and books you want to read, and to share information about these books with your friends. It also appears to provide a handy reader advisory service. To me LibGuides looks the way a library catalog should look and provides subject searches the way a library catalog should provide them. The Virtual Librarian service appears to be too undeveloped to be of much use, but I think Brad Czerniak might be on to something. I like the idea that it could actually become a very reliable Ask-a-Librarian service. MyFlickr will be a great addition to my Facebook profile. I hope I can also add it to my blog. I’m going to try. So stay tuned. As with MyFlickr, I see Slideshare as a much more useful addition to a blog than to a Facebook account. If truth be told, I’m not crazy about Facebook or MySpace. I think library accounts on such social networking sites might be useful to creating of the library but not the best way to provide library services. I checked out the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, Ryerson University and Hennepin County Public Library catalogs. Interesting. Didn’t stay long enough to learn many of the features and benefits and to see what advantages they have over the tandard catalogs. Tagging perhaps. Times awasting. Deadlines and commitments. Gotta go. Ciao, or Tschuss as my German friends say.

Wiki Wiki

Ok, this was almost too easy. Who needs Tips and Zips when you've got Barb Conkin and Stacey Wacknov?

After reading #16 Wiki Me This, I went to other participants' blogs to see how they did it. On Barb's Blog I learned about LISwiki, and decided that was the place for me to post anything I know. I remembered the employee satisfaction surveys report I wrote for my library management class and copied and pasted it to LISwiki. I asked the Information Services librarians if any of them could help me post a link to my wiki post in my blog. Stacey Wacknov, who started with Queens Library just yesterday, showed me how to do it. I copied and pasted the URL into my blog. Stacey performed a little HTML magic, and voila.


My LISwiki Post

Library 2.0

With Web 2.0, the Web 1s a shared virtual space rather than a network of websites and search engines. It’s a platform on which programmers write constantly updated software that is loosely connected with other Web applications. Web 2.0 sites offer novel as well as remixed content. They embody simplicity, interactivity and self-service. Users are always online, constantly connected to one another and to the Web. How will libraries thrive in the Web 2.0 world, where customers expect easy access to virtually everything? They need to focus on providing everything and on eliminating barriers like clumsy search interfaces that exist between customers and their information needs. Librarians must educate their customers when necessary, but as Rick Anderson says, if a library’s services can’t be used without training, there’s something wrong with the services. Libraries need to find new ways to bring their services to customers. This means integrating library services into their customers’ daily life patterns.

Technorati — and Top Favorited Blogs

Technorati makes it easier and more intuitive to search, discover and organize the blogosphere. The interface is clean and uncluttered. The search results page is very readable and the results are easy to sort. I like the Discovery section, which organizes the blogosphere in much the same way a Sunday newspaper is organized. I like the fact that Dave Sifry said Technorati created this section to “make serendipitous discovery of interesting stuff easier and more intuitive.” It’s easy to organize your favorites on Technorati and to learn about your favorite bloggers and their blogs. I like the fact that there are two home pages — a signed-in version and a signed-out version. On the signed-out version I can see the Discover section, learn about bloggers, find out what people are searching for and tag my favorite blogs. On the signed-in version I can see the latest posts from my favorite blogs and search Technorati in blog posts, in blog tags or in the blog directory.

Tag You're It!

Now I think I can really cover some ground in my attempt to catch-up. I'm already somewhat familiar with de.licio.us. I have a personal de.licio.us account. I've tagged the bookmarks for my bank, credit card, 401(k) and other retirement plan account to make it easy to find and search them. I've done the same with my travel, cycling and German study bookmarks. The Information Services Division at the Central Library also has a de.licio.us account. The librarians add bookmarks to sites on which they find authoritative answers to customers' questions. They then tag the sites in whatever way makes it easy for them to retrieve them. We've had a link to the account put on the Telephone Reference computer toolbars. Now it's time to become familiar with technorati.

Roll Your Own

Select Search Engine...Cycles and CyclistsSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

I'm an avid cyclist, and riding is how I spend much of my free time when the temperature is above 29 degrees Fahrenheit and the streets are dry. Creating a customized metasearch engine that lets me search all my favorite cycling sites at the same time is really pretty great. I'm in a mad rush to finish the 23 1/2 things by the deadline (see yesterday's post) and I'm on a bit of a roll (no pun intended, so I can't take the time now to add all the sites I want to add, but I will return to it after December 24. Another really cool thing to do would be to add my blog to the search box, because this would allow be to search it. But I can't decide if I want to add it to the search box I already created or create a separate search box. Decisions. Decisions.

Image Generators

Chocolate is the best antidote for frustration. After an ounce or two, I'm ready to proceed.



OK. Image generators are pretty cool. So what's next? Actually, I had some difficulty with the Generator Blog. Don't know why, but I tried without success to customize the countdown timer and put it on my blog. A colleague then told me about blingyblob.com. I don't like the countdown timer from that site as much, but I had no trouble customizing it and putting it on my blog. Sure wish I could get rid of the ©BliggyBlob.com line though.

I always liked the story about the guy who named his blog "So Much Ego, So Little Time." When I first heard about blogs, I thought, "Who cares?" In many ways, I still think blogs are only another way to put more junk out there on the Internet, but now I'm beginning to perceive their worth. In a very democratic way bloggers, by copying and pasting URLs of other blogs into their own blogs and other means, are deciding which blogs are worth reading and which deserve to be ignored.

I don't expect my blog's url to be widely copied and pasted. If I haven't had much profound to say in 60 years, I don't believe I don't think I'll begin now. The more I work on it, the more I think I'm building it for myself. Posting to my blog will be like putting entries in a journal — a journal that's open for anyone to read. But pity those who decide to read it.

RSS Feeds and Readers

I think RSS Feeds and Readers are Things #8 and 9, but I began to become familiar with them out of order. Of all the 23 1/2 things, RSS Feeds and Readers are the things I am most interested in. I'm something of a news junkie, so I can appreciate how RSS Feeds and Readers allow me to keep up with the news. Having news brought to my attention as it becomes news is so much more efficient than having to to search my news sources to to see if there have been any new developments. My colleagues and I tried using Bloglines but had problems with it. One of them recommended Google Reader, and that's what most of us are using.

I get RSS feeds from the following library blogs:

http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/

http://freerangelibrarian.com/

http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/

http://www.resourceshelf.com/

Posting Photos from Flickr

DSC00011
Originally uploaded by bibliotechguy

This is the photo of my library management class.

Creating a blog post that describes how I posted photos from my Flickr account to my blog will, I hope, help me to learn better by reinforcing what I learned and maybe help others learn how to post photos from Flickr to their blogs.

To post photos from Flickr you have to give Flickr permission to access your blog. My blog is on Blogger, and Blogger is part of Google, so I logged on to Google and granted Flickr permission to access my blog. I had already put on Flickr the photo I wanted to upload. It is a photo of my library management class that Ron Wan had Jerry Nichols take before he left for Beijing. After I granted Flickr permission to access me blog, all I had to do was select the picture and click the Blog This link above the photo.

RSS Feeds

OK, I tried Bloglines, but it didn’t work. I requested a verification email, but never received it. I tried again. Still no verification email. I checked with colleagues, who said they don’t like bloglines. They think it’s meschugge. They use Google Reader or Live Journal instead.

I have a Google Reader account. I really like it. When I subscribed Google Reader made it very easy for me to choose the news feeds I wanted. Since then I’ve added a number of feeds. Google Reader also makes it easy for meto organize and categorize my feeds.

I’m now in the habit of checking my RSS reader every day. I scan the entries. If something interests me, I click on it and read the headline. If the headline interests me, I click again and open the whole story.

With my journalism background and my quaint belief in journalistic objectivity, I still like to think that readers in the print age could get opposing points of view from their major news source. If they get all their news through RSS feeds, most people, I fear, will subscribe only to feeds from sources that agree with their point of view. They won’t get opposing viewpoints. If this happens, these readers will be less informed than they were when they were reading a daily metropolitan newspaper. If they get their news through RSS feeds, they should be sure to subscribe to feeds that provide opposing viewpoints as well as to feeds that present a point of view that coincides with their own.

Posting to My Blog

I learned how to sign in and post to my blog today. That may sound easy to you. But guess what, you're not technologically impaired like me. This needn't be so painful. But no pain, no gain, they say. Hey look, I'm learning by doing. It really is as easy as every technologicly literate person says it is.

Actually, I'm making great strides. Yesterday the Information Services librarians and I set up a del.icio.us account. We'll add websites that we find while researching customers' chat and telephone reference questions. I can hardly wait to see how some of the librarians will tag those sites. I can just imagine. Stay tuned.

The 71/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners
1. Begin with the End in Mind
2. Accept Responsibility for Your Own Learning
3. View Problems as Challenges
4. Have Confidence in Yourself as a Competent, Effective Learner
5. Create your own Learning Toolbox
6. Use Technology to Your Advantage
7. Teach and Mentor Others
8. Play

Begin with the End in Mind
Beginning with the end in mind is easy of you establish realistic goals. Break a project down to its components parts and achievement of each component part becomes a realistic goal.

Accept Responsibility for Your Own Learning
An important part of accepting responsibility for your own learning is recognizing your own learning style.

View Problems as Challenges
Ask what you can learn or what have I learned from every problem you encounter.
View every obstacle as a learning opportunity.

Have Confidence in Yourself as a Competent, Effective Learner.
You can learn well if you remember your learning style and adopt learning techniques that complement your learning style. And remember, the words you use to describe yourself will soon become reality. Don’t say it or think it unless you want it to be true.

Create your own Learning Toolbox
Put in your toolbox tools useful to learners with your learning style.

Use Technology to Your Advantage.
Embrace technology. Don’t view it as a series of obstacles to be overcome, but rather as a set of tools to make your life easier.

Teach and Mentor Others.
If you don’t know this already, experience will show you that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else.

Play
Hooray!